The Imagined New Thinking Dialogue II: Imagination in Emergency

Creative theories and agencies when History is a Catastrophe.
What is the role of creative practices related to legacies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid in October 2024, where violence across the world reminds us that political thought is a necessary part of entangled, everyday lives?
VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS, at the University of Johannesburg, in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, at Brown University, proudly launched an ongoing series of open online conversations titled, ‘The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues’. These thinking dialogues were initiated to offer a space for exchange between public intellectuals whose occupations and preoccupations are rooted in the creative tradition of radical imagination. In the first two dialogues, Professors Pumla Dineo Gqola and Françoise Vergès connected with Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga, Ayman AlAzraq, Dr Bhavisha Panchia and Dr Refiloe Lepere to discuss imagination, museums, alternative archives and creative theories.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2024, ONLINE @ 18H00 SAST
Thinking Dialogue II was titled ‘Imagination in Emergency: Creative theories and agencies when History is a Catastrophe’. Here, Ayman AlAzraq, Prof Pumla Dineo Gqola and Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga exercised co-thinking on alternative forms of archives, with reference to excerpts from Noor Abed’s film our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021); Gerald Machona’s film 'Vabvakure People from Far Away' (2012) and Ayman AlAzraq’s exhibition, The Lost Tapes of a Peoples’ Tribunal, 1982 (2023-2024). As the year turned toward the anniversary of October 7 and the emergency of Palestine’s siege, the discussants considered the critical place of imagining the new in a post-apartheid paradigm. With pause for thought at South Africa’s 30th year after apartheid, they invited those gathered to co-think along with them about global experiences of apartheid in past, present and concomitant catastrophes.
The first Thinking Dialogue is available to watch here: • The Imagined New Think...
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